Owing to an incentive system and the widely used proxy labour, lowly workers in the Food Corporation of India (FCI) are earning a handsome salary of up to Rs 4 lakh a month, more than double the pay its chairman-cum-managing director is getting.

Senior BJP leader and Kangra MP Shanta Kumar, also a former Union food and civil supplies minister, who has prepared a report on the restructuring of the FCI, wants that these labourers should be given voluntary retirement.

Loaders, who load and unload wheat, paddy and rice bags at different stages of movement of the foodgrain — from mandis to trucks, and from trucks to godowns — are considered the backbone of the central agency, which runs the Centre’s public distribution system.

“More than 300 loaders have received wages, including arrears, amounting to more than Rs 4 lakh in August last year.